Score One Vote For `None Of The Above'

January 10, 2000|By John McCarron.

The 22nd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States provides that: "No person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice."

What a pity.

William Jefferson Clinton is only 53 years old. He is more clever by half than the four leading candidates out to replace him. And while he may not be wholly responsible for the era of peace and prosperity now upon us, he certainly has not done anything to screw it up.

That's why, on March 21, I'll be writing in "Bill Clinton" at the top of my primary ballot. Take that, Rush Limbaugh. Go scratch, Tom DeLay.

This is unlikely because it's so late in the season that the nominations almost certainly will be decided. But on the off chance that either party's choice still hangs in the balance, March 21 would be no time for meaningless, if satisfying, gestures. It would be time to choose among the four fortunate sons: George W. Bush, John McCain, Al Gore and Bill Bradley.

(No apology here to Steve Forbes, who, while a very fortunate son, is no more a credible candidate than he is a New Jersey cattle breeder. How can voters take seriously a tax reformer who uses such a dodge to avoid paying his own?)

Why call them the four fortunate sons?

Because none had to scratch and scramble, as Clinton did, to climb from a broken, blue-collar family to the halls of national power.

Clinton did it through native intelligence and force of personality. Sure, it's a personality that strikes many as patently phony. And there's no question his choice of issues and presentation-of-self have been very carefully contrived. But hey, didn't Clinton's harshest critics once have their agenda voiced by a glib B-movie actor?

Anyhow, here's the lineup in case we have to take this primary thing seriously:

On the Republican side there is George W. Bush, the son of a millionaire ex-president, versus John McCain, the son and grandson of U.S. Navy admirals. Back when Bill Clinton was trying to keep his drunken stepfather from slugging his overworked mother, these guys were zooming around in sports cars and partying through schools they wouldn't have been admitted to if their names were Bill Clinton.

Some people judge Baby Boom candidates by what they did during the Vietnam War. I don't because it was an ignoble and ill-conceived war that a young man could oppose, or join, with equally good conscience. As a former naval officer, though, I wouldn't downplay the horrors endured by McCain during his captivity in Hanoi. Nor overplay them, since he got what every volunteer bargains for, whether we know it or not.

Gov. Bush's most significant proposal to date has been to throw gasoline, in the form of a $483 billion tax cut that would mainly benefit the well-to-do, on an already overheated economy.

Sen. McCain, who stresses foreign policy to exploit Bush's inexperience there, says he'd take a harder line against Russia and China . . . even though he didn't vote to use force against marauding Bosnian Serbs.

On the Democratic side there is Vice President Al Gore, a famous senator's son who grew up in a Washington hotel suite, versus former Sen. Bill Bradley, the only son of a Missouri bank owner who has been revered as a basketball star since high school.

Gore seems never to have a spontaneous moment, though he does have a penchant for loopy, New Age rhetoric about environmentalism and personal fulfillment.

Bradley is an aloof, go-it-alone type who somehow thinks he can convince Congress to order the registration of every handgun in America and at the same time appropriate enough money to buy health insurance for every child whose family earns less than $49,200 a year. Clinton, who has twice Bradley's political skills, never proposed anything so radical.

Don't get me wrong. It's altogether possible that any of the fortunate sons could make a good president. Maybe even a great one . . . if the gods of history smile upon him and the economy continues to roll.

But after all is said and done this primary season, this voter still would punch for Clinton on March 21 if he had the choice.

Oh, I know the conventional media wisdom is that the president is a womanizer and a liar who will not be missed. That's because our business has pretty much succumbed, in our search for audience share, to the entertainment world's fetish for sex, sensationalism and personality politics. Spoon-fed sordid details by Clinton's political opponents, we joined the Republican fox hunt, hounding Clinton until he admitted his adulterous affair and perjurious denial. As though either mattered.

Meantime, almost no credit has been accorded Clinton for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and North American Free Trade Agreement breakthroughs on trade; for the NATO victory against Slobodan Milosevic and Serbian genocide; for diplomatic breakthroughs in Northern Ireland and the Middle East; for a balanced federal budget, unemployment rates below 5 percent and an 11,000-plus Dow Jones industrial average.